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Aren’t you tired of reading generic Pinterest marketing tips from bloggers, that eventually conclude in selling you a course (with the actual tips), that  they also happen to be an affiliate for?

While I have nothing against affiliate marketing, I think concrete strategies that actually HELP you drive free traffic to your blog are either limited or hard to find.

As some one who has herself struggled A LOT to drive traffic to this website without having 1000 backlinks (which btw takes ages to build), I know how annoying this can be.

I was there, and now I am here-

You’ll probably think now, “1.1m impressions is cool and all that, but how does this translate to actual website traffic?”.

I am getting there.

Here’s the REAL numbers behind this “1.1m” story-

This is a screenshot from the first quarter of 2019 and as you see 65.1% of my traffic came from Pinterest.

This translated to  29291 users.

This translated to 29291*1.23 (page/session)= 36027 page views.

Now, as a domain that is only 8 months old and STRUGGLES to increase organic traffic, this is a dream come true.

I used to think this was some great secret guarded by Pinterest fairies who were some how only accessible by paying $400 for a course.

Nope. It IS possible to start driving a ton of free traffic to your website.

This post will take you through concrete ACTIONABLE tips that will help you kickstart your Pinterest slumber. 

Pinterest Marketing Tips by indiangirling

First things first, let’s make a few assumptions right away-

1. You have a Pinterest business account and rich pins enabled. If not, go here to create a business account and activate rich pins.
2. You are using Pinterest to drive traffic to a website. It may be a blog, an e-commerce store or any commercial brand.

Now, that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let’s jump right into what you can do to drive free traffic to your site!

Tip #1 Research, plan and create viral content.

A lot of people blog about ‘what they feel like blogging about’.

This is an excellent strategy for a private blog, or one that you never hope to scale or make money from.

I am very much guilty of doing the same, until I realised no one really cares about my random feelings.

They care about feelings they can RELATE to and actually need and use.

In other words, your content needs to be iNFORMATIONAL or INSPIRATIONAL. Anything else, is difficult to scale. Simply because, content is meant to be consumed. And the best content or content that has the potential to get viral always checks off those two categories.

How can you create WOW content?

Step 1: Find out what is trending.

• Check out Google Trends- An excellent and free tool to see what kind of things are people looking for. This is an excellent way to plan and see what kind of content would generate the best long-term traffic both from organic or inorganic perspective. You can also filter by geography, industry and more to see what fits your niche best.
• You can also check out Buzzsumo and see what your competitors have maximum shares for. I have found many ideas in travel (my niche) by simply searching the URL of some competitors and seeing the number of Pinterest shares. The tool is free, with limited functionality, but unless you are a company with a large budget, the free plan is enough for content ideas.

Step 2: Brainstorm on a Keyword list and create content which you can also organically rank for.

Once you have a broad idea of trends, make sure to conduct detailed Keyword research. If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out basic SEO beginner tips here. You want to create content that will do well not only on Pinterest but ALSO on Google. Here’s where your MAIN research kicks in.

The tool I use for doing my keyword research is called Keysearch. I found this tool by accident, but after a few months, I feel if there is one tool you should use as a new blogger it is this one! Not to mention, it is WAY cheaper than premium tools such as AHREFS and SEMRUSH. (Click here to get 20% OFF on Keysearch with code “KSDISC”)

Some tips on how I conduct my keyword research are-

• Check out long-tail keywords by volume and see what’s the competition score. My DA is 25 and the keywords I rank for are at a maximum difficulty of about 40 on Keysearch. They even give you a suggested keyword difficulty score to target. (P.S. You can also track existing keyword rank and see dynamic changes). I add them to a list and see which ones are best suited to my content and audience.
• Check the existing blog posts and see what they are lacking. The easiest way to create better content is to CREATE better content. You can check out the top 5-6 posts that are ranking for your targeted keyword, find missing information or gaps and make sure to include them in your detailed post.

Once you’ve done this, you are ready to start writing and creating kickass content!

Tip #2 Create click-worthy Pinterest graphics.

I think we all know this subconsciously but somehow fail to internalise when creating Pinterest graphics.

To give you an example, I will show you two pictures so that you know what I am talking about-

• AMI Headline Analyser– An excellent place to analyse for free how powerful your headline is. Aim for a score of 40 or above always!
• Canva– A free graphic design tool that I use to design ALL my pins.
• Unsplash– An excellent alternative to Pixabay to find out free pictures for your graphics. You can simply upload them to your canva account and design with them!

Tip #3 Create more personal boards.

Tip #4 Send group boards join requests every month.

Tip #5 Make manual pinning your best friend.

Tip #6 Measure, track and repeat success.

All the tips above tell you what you should do and how.

But how do you know if any of that is working.

Here’s where analytics comes in. Make Google Analytics, Pinterest Insights and Tailwind Analytics (if you use), your obsession.

I track on a monthly basis which of my pins are doing the best in terms of bringing traffic. This is also how you can identify which pins are going viral or have the potential to.

Where do you find this data though? Here’s a short clip:

In short: Google Analytics -> Acquistion -> All Traffic-> Referrals -> Pin URL

Once you have identified the winning horses, create more pins and repeat the steps above!

This also goes into content that just doesn’t do well on Pinterest. Take a cue and drop it. Perhaps use it on other social media marketing networks or content syndication platforms such as Quora.

If you are doing everything right in your Pinterest marketing or content marketing strategies and still not getting the desired returns, examine your pin descriptions.

Could you go back and update pin descriptions to make them more SEO friendly and easily searchable?

Often, we don’t need to do have an in-depth look into our Pinterest accounts and we can find all the things that can be optimised!

Tip # 7 Include your pins in your blog posts and add social sharing plugins. 

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